By the Morning
by ReceiverOfWisdom302
Summary: Humanity speculates their origins in the known universe. Jasper's escort mission becomes significantly more complicated when an artifact is mistakenly uncovered. Peridot is thrown into delirium over misguided warnings from the faces of the deceased. Lapis gets pulled into much more than she signed up for. Allusions to the answer are enough to drive entire colonies mad.
1. Solution

**If you know nothing about Dead Space you're in the right place. I'll explain as I go along and the characters involved are just as clueless.**

The shapeless void calls to her.

Beyond the bathyscaphe-like vehicle, a number of disembodied voices, for as well as she can make them out, request the technician's evacuation from the underwater structure; or their entrance into it. The heavy, grating rasp of each tone fused into the next sends tremors down Peridot's spine.

For fleeting moments, something with a vividly pale, stretched eye veers out from the darkness and towards the hand that is pressed against several centimeters of glass, only to dart away before Peridot can get a proper look at it.

"Earth to Peridot," a burly tone remarks over the interior comm system, without patience or humour.

"We're not on Earth." The Technician replies in nonchalance, snapped from her reverie and hoping that no vocal tremor came through in her response. The mass of dark forms she had once thought to be taking shape before her eyes were as seamless as the rest of the endless dark.

The voices plagued her for days. The masses of vaguely human forms floating in the watery abyss beyond the scope of the bathyscaphe were new.

She turns her head towards the hard-light screen and adjusts herself back into an appropriate position within the seat of the cockpit.

Through the veil of static interference, Peridot can make out the slightly vague features of her co-worker on the transmitting monitor. Jasper looks on; unimpressed and, judging from the shadows beneath her eyes, utterly exhausted.

"We're miles beneath the base. I need you to _**focus**_." Ever berating. Ever persistent.

Peridot, under her own amount of impressive stress, does not bother to hide the roll of her eyes, even to the assertive commander.

"I _am_ focused. Just because I look away from the screen for a few moments out of several hours of attention doesn't mean I'm inattentive."

"You've fallen behind." Jasper urges lowly. Her piercing eyes flit away for a moment towards something off-screen. She seems disturbed and annoyed enough for Peridot to gather that she is not the Escort's only concern.

"Like I said –." Before the Technician can finish the retort, she jolts forward _hard_ in her seat. Leather straps that secure across the Tech's front are the only things preventing her entire weight from flying right into all of the fragile equipment. The console beneath her quaking finger tips shudders, and the entirety of the submerged vehicle darkens for several moments. When the power returns, a bewildered Jasper is shouting broken, unintelligible questions through plenty of interference. For several moments she is too disoriented to try and correct the signal.

Before she can even attempt a correction however, the signal clears immediately, and comes back clearer than it once had been.

Jasper almost looks concerned.

She seems to have interference on her end as well, because seconds after the signal becomes uncorrupted, that borderline concern flashes into anger.

"What did you **do**?" She yells into the mic of the communication device.

On Peridot's receiving end, her auditory output screeches with the pitch of Jasper's voice, and it causes her already persistent migraine to skyrocket, and thus slaps whatever patience she had tamed across the face.

Peridot responds by yelling right back. Off record, of course. She turns off the visual and auditory recording, because this series of events is something she deems non-mandatory to include in the report, and she will be responsible for clipping and standardizing the imagery later on to present to the Lead of the Project anyhow. It is simply less that she will need to cut out. And less for anyone to see if they happen to want a raw copy. Peridot doubts the record has recovered from the momentary lapse of power anyhow, and the thought only surfaces to quell her anxious conscience.

"It's not like I purposely drove into the nearest slab of compressed rock! These lights have a certain radius and… and you're _gone_ from the circumference of my radar."

"Because you lagged behind," Jasper accuses, quite lamely, and leans closer towards the console to fiddle with the settings.

"We're only allowed a certain speed."

Jasper slams a fist down.

Despite her limited range of view of the Escort, Peridot could see the jolt of a muscled arm, and hear the distinct yelp of a fragile, metallic console as it was punished with her strength for the Technician's insolent word. The half-Japanese female leans back in her seat and crosses her arms firmly across her chest, trying with much difficulty to keep her expression neutral.

After periods of silence, Jasper sighs on the other line and leans back as well, tapping in what Peridot assumes to be a set of coordinates. She times the keys with the common amount of slots coordinates might possess in order to make the assumption.

"I'll turn around for you and assess damage. _You're_ writing up the report for it, though."

-

In order to place less strain on her oxygen reserves, Jasper had temporarily cut their communications.

Peridot sits in the silence that stretches on. The darkness beyond seems to be encroaching upon her steadily, made worse by the fact that she dimmed all external and internal lights to improve her own reserves of power. Miles upon miles below the surface of an ocean that took up more than half of a planet's face was not a favourable place to be when one ran out of oxygen or power. Communications with the base were faulty, at best. Especially as close to the floor as they were.

The returning whispers and inclining tones only serve to make her feel all the more trapped. She places her hands over her ears and finds that it makes very little difference.

The cacophony of voices, within the short passage of time, becomes more coherent in their unknown purpose. It becomes harder to drive them out.

One unified tone stands out, and almost immediately, the rest die down into a dull simmer of suspicious murmurs.

It croaks out a distinct greeting.

Peridot nearly jumps right out of her seat, for it sounds as if it is right beside her ear. Again, the leather straps that secure her into it prevent the reactionary mistake from being played out. It is grounding, and the technician seeks solace in gripping the arm of the seat tightly. She snaps her head in the direction so hastily, pain shoots up the side of her neck. What welcomes her causes her to grow so cold, the smarting injury is all too rapidly forgotten. In the soft reflection of the glass, her image visibly pales.

It is the leering-eyed sea creature that had once swiveled and shied from her hand. She had mistaken it as something akin to an Angler fish back in Earth's depths. It greets her with a broad, misshapen grin, and Peridot wonders how she had ever mistaken it for a simple fish.

It is distinctly humanoid, albeit rotten, with bits of flesh chunked out from its neck and the bottom part of its face in grey, papery rivets. The sight causes Peridot's steel stomach to lurch.

Four prongs of teeth jut out from a smoothly hooked jaw, lined by segments of spaced, significantly smaller incisors. The research-drawn side of Peridot notes, purposely, how well-suited they are to shred muscle and tissue alike.

It waves a flap of an arm. Closer to the dim lights of the submersible, Peridot can make out the thin connection of sickly skin that merges the creature's leg and arm, splaying them out into a fork of limbs joined by the thigh and upper arm.

In her odd delirium, Peridot half-heartedly waves back at it.

That seems to please it.

 _ **M**_ _ay I come in?_

It's a ludicrous but polite question. Peridot swivels her head back towards the hatch. It was the only entrance, and the only exit out of the submersible. There is no way she is opening that.

Despite the several centimeters of impact-resistant glass standing between herself and the creature outside, however, she feels not the slightest impression of safety when delivering her answer with a shake of her head.

It looks down-stricken, not necessarily hostile or angry. It's a relief.

 _ **I**_ _have something to tell you._

"Why can't you tell me right now? I can hear you just fine."

 _ **I**_ _t's a secret. It is very important._

Peridot looks around herself towards the dead hard-light communications monitor, and over the creature's broken shoulder into the blackness beyond. "There's no one else here."

It frowns as best as it can with no lips, pounding a fleshy palm against the glass. The eye, the one that is not entirely a vacant white, visibly trembles its milky iris as it searches her face. It calms itself easily enough after clenching its jaw several times.

 _ **Y**_ _ou're not safe right now. I need to come in and tell you. If you open the hatch I can stop the water from coming in. We will talk._

It seems… Reasonable to Peridot. Quite reasonable. The more she thinks on it, the more she trusts the visage beyond the glass.

The thing grins warmly, gesturing up towards the hatch.

It would be just a second for it to get in, right? A little water would not hurt.

The voice utters its approval and many heart-warming notions of encouragement.

Peridot feels good, for once in a long time, and quite confident about it. Her head is pitching a fit, and it feels as if her throbbing brain might exceed the mass of her skull, but something tells her that if she opens the hatch and allows the polite guest inside, all of that will be stopped.

She unhooks herself from the seat with shaken hands, and gets up, stumbling her way towards the back of the bathyscaphe.

 _ **H**_ _urry. Hurry. Hurry._

Her metallic hands reach the ladder. The entire bathyscaphe shudders hard and lurches a little to one side. Something else had collided with it and Peridot, for the life of her, cannot figure out what. She doesn't have time to.

 _ **M**_ _ove. Now. You must get it open right now. You will be too late._

She scrambles up the ladder, and sets her hands on the dial pad. It recognizes her touch and frees the wheeled handle, enabling her to turn it and unlock the hatch. Thousands of pounds of water pressure await her on the other side. But it's all right. The guest will keep the entrance of the water minimal. She has to hear the secret. The seal unlocks and Peridot pulls back hard. 


	2. Breath

Instead of water, bright fluorescent lights drown her senses. She cringes hard, and shields her eyes with an arm. A casting shadow relieves her, and when she peeks beneath her arm, the progressively confused and exasperated expression of the Commander is what meets her.

"Did it send you to tell me the secret?" She blurts, out of uncharacteristic desperation.

Jasper twists her expression slightly as she peers over the edge of where her submersible's exit connects with Peridot's entrance. She places her feet over the edge, and roughly prods Peridot in the shoulder with a boot.

"Did what? You're taking up the ladder. Get down."

Peridot scowls, but complies, working her way down from the ladder as the Commander follows after her. She keeps her eyes on the floor as she descends.

As she descends, what she had just attempted begins to make less and less sense to her. What had she been _thinking_? If Jasper had not connected both of their vehicles before she had opened it, unlocking the exit would have been the all-time stupidest mistake she had ever made. And the last.

As soon as her feet connect to the floor, she rushes back over to the side of the glass where she had last seen the creature. The vacant void stares back at her. Jasper's heavy footsteps come up behind her, tugging her away from the glass.

"You look really, really pale. Sit down for a minute before the report includes an injury under my supervision." She secures a grip on the Technician's shoulder, pulling her towards the opposite side of the room. Jasper gives a slight shove, and has the Tech sit down on the cool, relieving floor.

Part of Peridot realizes the blunt treatment is simply Jasper, and that she does not necessarily mean anything by it. Another part of her simply hates how often she is jostled and knocked around like an object. She bites at her lower lip when a particularly stabbing sense of pain shoots through her skull, and her legs cripple. Forget the rough treatment. Jasper picked an excellent time to seat her on the floor. She leans her head back against the glass, and sucks in a breath.

Jasper stares, unabashed, before she is waved away by the Tech.

"I'm _fine_. I'm just not used to being this deep. Check on the condition of my bathyscaphe. I'm sure you got a better look at it from the outside."

"I think they're going to have to send salvage drones. Or a recovery mechanic, if they want to avoid flooding the interior." Jasper stalks her way over to the console, taking out a Data Assistant. She plugs in her assessment of the outside, and then proceeds to scan the immediate interior, in the direction of the impact zone.

"The Authority won't be pleased. How did you manage this? Seriously, this sort of mistake isn't like you. _I'm_ usually the one fucking up the equipment." It's a cruder attempt at a jest.

Peridot is not pleased. She diverts the topic. "Did you see anything else out there?"

Jasper shoots her a look as she wraps up her scans. As per protocol, she creates a back-up file, and then proceeds to extract data from the console. Peridot is, in the least, intrigued to observe from her end of the room. Just a few weeks previous, Jasper had been hardly able to send an email through a Data Assistant without the Tech's begrudging assistance.

They grow up so fast.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Something slightly human-looking maybe?"

"Slightly human-looking? That's just… Yeah… Your grandmother dropped by my window for a minute to say hi."

"That's _seriously_ rude. And unprofessional."

"I've never even seen your grandmother. Stop taking things so personally. If you're going to ask a weird question you're going to get a weird answer."

Peridot grows silent. The incessant pounding of her head is doing nothing for her mood, and responding to her Escort would do even less. The cool glass behind her grows warmer and warmer. The entire room is stifling, and she feels the urge to escape. _Something_ has to ease the pain.

While Jasper crouches down and rummages beneath the vehicle's console, Peridot shakily braces herself against the glass, and tries to work her way in the direction of the ladder once more. The pain becomes crippling. She looks up the ladder towards the top where the interior of Jasper's bathyscaphe is in clear view, and the sting of her skull becomes so great, Peridot half-collapses against the rungs. She feels as if she is being punished for her inability to have opened it sooner. What possessed her to even try?

Before her mind can rapid-fire itself into a spiral of internal debate and existential interrogation, a large and muscled arm wraps itself securely around her midriff, hugging her into an odd mix of a soft yet burly frame. It's too warm. She tries to squirm away in her disorientation.

Jasper looks both pained and a slighter bit offended as the Tech shoves out of her supporting grasp.

Peridot feels a little bad, but not too much, because she swears that her cerebral matter is melting out of her ears as Jasper speaks, causing her to sound very far away.

Had the room dimmed? Or is that a lack of oxygen to her brain?

Jasper's slighted expression remains, but she is gripping at her own head, and Peridot is privy to the hint that maybe she is experiencing the same mental assault. But the brute of a woman powers through it. Like she does everything else.

Peridot opens her mouth with an exceedingly rare intent to reassure the Commander, only to be cut off by said individual shoving a knee into her rear. She jolts forward at the impact, nearly connecting her forehead with the bars of the ladder. The desire to sympathize dies immediately and Peridot considers turning around and getting a good handful of the long white locks in order to _shake some sense into her_ but when she even turns her head back to glare, the room swims with her gaze.

She is drowning in her own way. The pressure of the ocean is not needed.

The unkind action of nudging her coworker forward seems to go unnoted by the perpetrator, who has her unpleasant gaze fixed to the destination at the top. "Are you going to just stare at it or are you going to try to climb up? I'll be right behind you." Jasper finally looks down, and gets a fair assessment of the state of her associate. The unfocused murder eyes are all the context she needs. There is a moment of pause where she shuffles her massive frame, and reaches forward again, pulling Peridot towards her.

The Technician's head feels heavy and her stomach is competing for a gymnastic medal in the Olympics. Passing out would be favourable at that point. Jasper tucks her up over her shoulder with relative care, like a weighted duffel of essential belongings, and begins to boldly scale the ladder with one hand.

It is a daring process. When they reach the top and Jasper squeezes both of their masses through the entrance, her headache simultaneously dissipates. It's an incredible respite.

Peridot clings to the larger form of the other, and heaves out a breath of staggered relief. There is, similarly, a dramatic change of temperature. She feels chilled to her core and the warmth of the Commander is her solace.

Only when Jasper tugs at her Spine-Mounted Display does she become conscious of her grip, and loosens it, being set down on the floor. Jasper lingers close however, in case the Technician loses her balance and collapses. It's rather considerate, and since Peridot's vision is not done swimming, she appreciatively keeps one hand firmly locked on Jasper's shoulder.

On the Spine-Mounted Display of her bare-minimum suit set up, the segmented bar that runs along her spine and integrates into her nervous system glows a pale blue, signifying that her general state of health is exceptional and above the seventy-five percent mark. But she does not _feel_ exceptional.

Jasper stays long enough to roam her eyes down the display, before she forcibly removes herself from the Technician.

Peridot grapples for the shelves as a result of the abandonment, and attempts to follow the path of the Commander with her eyes.

Jasper is across the room by the time she is able to focus. Gradually, she is able to stave off her sickness.

She plugs in the drive and downloads it to her own console, backing up her own data as well. All of it is stored in the mainframe and encrypted.

Peridot can struggle through her mind's haze well enough to catch sight of Jasper taking out an _unauthorized_ drive to copy all of the information once more, before storing the memory device somewhere in her skin-tight armoured suit.

"What was that for?"

"What?" Jasper has the decency to look a little startled, her hand shooting down from the area she stored the drive in. She tries to cover up her actions by producing two of the authorized drives in the hand, holding them up. Her tone hitches defensive, but also carefully maintained. "I'm replicating the data that was in your sub."

The Technician squints, but says nothing further on the subject. She stoops, and inches her way across the white floor, bracing a hand against the hatch in order to close it. "I forgot to turn off my oxygen reserves."

"I'm merging them, since you'll be stealing from mine for the duration that we're down here."

"Excuse me. Let me just hold my breath," the Tech bites back, slamming the hatch closed and churning it. Sealed, she stands to check the status monitor of the vehicle. "We'll have to cut this trip short, anyway. Did you get this refueled before you prepped it for decent?"

The non-committal grunt from Jasper answers the question well enough.

She's better now, significantly. So she meanders her way back towards the cockpit, seating herself by the control console.

Jasper glances at her, then double-takes. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Driving?"

Incredulous, Jasper forfeits trying to gain a connection with the surface, and grabs the Technician by the back of her RIG suit. "Oohono, I don't think so. If you hit anything else down here, we're fucked. All I'm getting from the surface is static."

Peridot slaps the other's hand away, baring her teeth, having the audacity to look absolutely peeved. She has never enjoyed being belittled over simple mistakes in a profession she excelled in. Especially when Jasper's mistakes far exceeded her own in every classification of their duties.

Regardless, she trudges her way over to the other seat, one of two total, behind Jasper's. It has a cup holder in the arm. She thinks she might survive the downgrade.

Jasper detaches from Peridot's abandoned bathyscaphe, notes the coordinates of its position to send to the recovery team, and presses on through their original route.

Peridot hopes the damages won't be deducted from her next paycheck.

-

 ** _I_** _still have the secret. They haven't taken it._

Peridot has the dignity not to fly right out of her seat and grappled for the one in front of her.

When she _very_ slowly turns her head in the direction of the familiar voice, it is beside her, grinning and slouching over with one mutilated hand resting on the back of her seat as it leans towards her. Its breath is something hellish on its own.

Peridot lowers her voice significantly, conscious of the Commander in the seat in front of her. She couldn't imagine what would happen if she knew about the creature having, somehow, infiltrated the bathyscaphe.

"How did you get in?"

 ** _Y_** _ou opened the hatch. You let me in. For the secret._

A million questions struck Peridot. She stuck to the most predominant one, leaning closer towards the rotting thing despite every internal instinct telling her to do the opposite.

"What's the secret," she whispers. Jasper glances back. She freezes.

Oddly enough, Jasper regains focus on where she's going, as if she hardly noticed the corpse hunched over beside the Engineer.

 ** _C_** _onvergence_ , the cold breath seethes.

"Convergence?" She asks aloud.

Jasper looks over her shoulder again, and raises her eyebrow. "What?"

Peridot looks to the grinning creature for clarity as to whether or not she should say anything. But the term _secret_ implies that the information should be held personal. Peridot shrugs her shoulders. "I didn't say anything."

"Yes you did." The Commander snaps, irritably. Regardless she turns her attention to her tasks once more. "Stop distracting me. The radar is having detection issues."

"What does convergence mean? Not the definition… What do _you_ mean by convergence?"

 ** _U_** _nity. Disassociation All organic matter._

"Both unity and disassociation? Of what?"

 ** _A_** _ll._ The creature extends its arms, shredding apart the skin that connected its forearm to its thigh. It's a grotesque sound, and Peridot has not the slightest clue as to why Jasper hasn't whipped around in her seat and filled the corpse with plasma rounds. The Tech isn't sure why she hasn't bothered to do so herself, either. Her sense of curiosity has always seemed to extend beyond her sense of caution when it came down to it.

"I'm… I don't understand."

 ** _L_** _eave it where you found it. You have to be careful. There will be nothing left of you. You have to resist._

"Nothing you're saying is making sense." The headache is returning. Peridot places her fingers to her temple, and doubles over.

 ** _D_** _o you think it was supposed to be found? Buried this deep?_

"The Artifact?"

The being sways its head, as if agonized by the title. Peridot had not noticed before, but as it leaned farther out, she could see the swell of organs beneath orange, translucent skin that expanded with each heave. The creature sucked in a particularly labored breath, and the skin tightened to the point Peridot feared it was going to burst.

Jasper turned to say something to her. The creature gives her an answer and she is forced to tune the Commander out, lest she miss this pertinent information.

 ** _L_** _ooking, acknowledging its presence was too much. It's being_ _ **studied**_ _now. You're helping._

It becomes angry, accusatory. A hard breath causes the skin to stretch out even farther. Peridot scrambles to find her voice, to tell the creature to calm down. She cannot get a word in.

 ** _I_** _f you listen to them, they'll take you. You have to tell everyone._

Her mind is on overload from the information received. All of the relief prior is a faded sensation. The headache makes its return as a stabbing pain, and her stomach blooms with uncomfortable heat. "I… I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. Wasn't this a secret? I still don't know –."

 ** _H_** _undreds of thousands of voices compressed into a single entity. Individuality will die. The sense of self will evaporate. This unity this… crude collaboration must be prevented. But… The beginning. The dawn of Convergence._ Its tone becomes agonized. It releases an inhuman bellow and contorts its head so far back ligaments and the cartilage of its throat are torn and splayed open. Through the revealed opening, it finds an empowering wheeze and continues to expand.

"No – _no, no_ **stop** –," her pleading catches the attention of the Commander, who makes an effort to cock her head around far enough to get a look at the Technician.

The creature swells and then erupts under the pressure of stolen oxygen. Organs and flesh explode out from the origin, entirely coating the room in black and red matter.

Peridot drops her jaw open, eyes blown wide in absolute horror. Her voice is brought to a high pitch as she stutters out a shaky breath and while her mind is drawn blank with what she had just witnessed, she does not scream.

Jasper is looking at her with abject calmness compared to Peridot's own mortified disposition. She seems more concerned than anything. Jasper turns back around to play with the settings, before she unhooks herself from the seat and stands to approach the Technician. She crouches down in front of the black-haired female, looking stern and on edge.

Crimson, beyond the usual painted markings, decorates half of Jasper's face. Peridot can see that a portion of her white mane is drenched in brain matter and a retching sound escapes her. She grips the edge of her seat so tightly her knuckles are white beyond the paleness of her usual skin tone.

Jasper, undeterred, clasps both of her hands on either side of the Technician's clammy face, trying to meet her gaze.

"I seriously need to you _calm down_. This isn't like you at all and I'm more than tempted to call this off and return to the surface. You're whispering to yourself, staring off into space like you're looking at someone. I'm more than a little freaked out, and you look like you're either about to bolt right out of here or beat me over the head."

Peridot tries to recall what she's been told.

 _Tell everyone_.

"Jasper you – we – leave it alone. We have to stop. It's Convergence." Peridot gives the other a once-over, and the smell of decay hits her. She tries to pry the desecrated hands from her own face, pushing herself back into the seat as far as she can just to get away from it. The entire room is caked and Jasper isn't giving in the slightest consideration and, yes, it does make her want to bolt and run and get as far away from the sea location as possible because the stench is distinctly salty and so much like the ocean around them and it is sending her senses into overload.

As opposed to backing off, Jasper grabs both of the metallic hands that are prying her own from her associate's appalled expression and locks them in a tight grip, giving the Technician a relative amount of space only because she looks desperate enough to try anything to get away.

"I think you should lie down in the chamber until you feel better. I'm going to mark our coordinates and set up a return date before requesting access to the surface."

"We have to tell them Jasper," Peridot continues, her eyes flitting wildly over the Commander's face. She pulls one of her hands free to reach up and smear it across the larger woman's jaw. She then looks at her hand, disgusted and vexed. "You're _covered_. Everything is _covered_. Why don't you care?"

Jasper quirks her lip and leans away to look around her at the plainly rustic, practically sterilized environment of the bathyscaphe's interior, and then proceeds to wipe her palm against the side of her face. Looking at it, nothing abnormal shows. "Covered in what?"

The Technician looks at her Escort like _she_ is the one to have lost her mind. As if she cannot believe Jasper could possibly ask that question.

She blinks and the gore is gone at once. Jasper's face is screwed into confusion and the bathyscaphe windows are so clear the encroaching void around them is visible once more. She looks at the hand that had graced the Escort's face and finds that no fluid taints it. _What the_ hell _is going on?_ Peridot thinks, working her mouth to provide an explanation for herself.

"Look," Jasper starts, releasing her hold on the Technician and standing back up. She eases herself away, speaking in her usual scathed growl of a tone, albeit lower and more quietly. "We're going to go back up now. I'll get you in to the Medbay as soon as we get the bathyscaphe secured."

Peridot snaps her head towards the window. In the reflection, her eyes are absolutely _wild_. She doesn't blame Jasper for putting some distance between them. She tries to smother her urgency.

"Go lie down in the chamber. I'll even flood some extra oxygen back there."

"I don't want to."

"I didn't ask if you wanted to." Jasper makes a turn for authority.

Begrudgingly, Peridot obeys. The unprofessional, borderline "friend" aspect of their job only goes so far and the Technician knows when Jasper means business.

Maybe she does need to lie down. Just for a little while. She unhooks herself from the seat and slides off of it, stumbling her way towards the back. Pushing aside a heavy hatch on the floor, not too far from the one used to connect Jasper's submersible to her own, she worms her way down into it and is instantly met with the softness of a cryo/memory foam dual preservative. It heats up as she lies against it, and then immediately cools, adjusting to her body temperature and causing her to feel as if she is lying on air.

The lights dim as she attempts, with not too great of an effort, to get comfortable.

On either side, the blackness of the deep encases her. She sucks in a breath and slowly exhales, and then repeats the process.

The hum of the engine is a lulling noise and for once in quite a while, Peridot is allowed to stop gather her thoughts.

She replays the warning, as cryptic as it seemed, and the events that led up to the creature's termination. Was several weeks' worth of terrible sleep finally leading up to her losing her head?

It wasn't uncommon.

Several other scientists and researchers on the surface claimed to have odd visual and auditory hallucinations. But something like this? Peridot was sure she was a special case.

It is difficult to discern whether or not she should be taking it seriously.

But she cannot recall having _that_ much of a colourful imagination.

She roams her hands along her person until she finds the seal along her bodysuit, and she pries it open, dipping to retrieve an almost paper thin holopad. Flattening it out against the top of the pill-shaped chamber, she uses her finger to calibrate the device to her touch and begins scribbling a furious amount of notes with the tip of a finger.

Convergence, unity, The Artifact, the events that led up to the creature's crude display. It is difficult to peer through the haze of the mental trauma; the migraine, the shock, the lack of understanding.

For as well as she can draw, she supplies her own information with sketchy illustrations. Squinting at the glowing screen in the low light of the chamber does not improve her condition. Her thought process becomes ridden and flagrant with anguish and self-doubt until she becomes fed up with her own effort. She oozes a never ending tension and when adrenaline finally finishes coursing through her, she feels ragged and exhausted.

Her distress is due to a disgusting lack of knowledge.

She needs to compare notes and experience and she racks her brain for _whoever_ that could possibly supply her with either.

The Technician's limbs ache and her head is pounding by the time she whispers _fuck it_ , and shoves the holopad back into its place. There is time, isn't there? The creature never said _when_ Convergence –.

She can't get into that again. She's going to drive herself further into a delirium. Peridot refuses to turn on either side, fearing even a peek into the depths that surround her. She adjusts the cryofoam and allows the natural sleep-encouraging chemicals to ease themselves into her frame.

Closing her eyes, the sensory deprivation leads her over the edge and into much needed rest.


	3. Message

In her dreams, the void consumes her senses.

Peridot is weightless and without the oppression of time. She breathes easily without the compression of her skin-fitting suit though what flows through her lungs, she is not sure. She touches her bare hands to herself, free from the ironically liberating metallic touch of her limb enhancements, though her body is numb and the action is for naut.

The back of her neck prickles with the incessant sensation of being watched and observed. By what, she cannot see.

Cold concrete beneath her bare feet, and she stands before a wide passage. The tickle of whispers around her seeps through the dirt walls. Far more present behind her, Peridot is urged forward by the instinct to escape their grating voices. She squints into the darkness, and feels along her face for her visor. Fear and uncertainty settles into the pit of her stomach when she finds that she is without them.

Squinting into the darkness, she places one foot in front of the other, and as she progresses, the passage lightens. The voices become clearer, more unionized and single-minded. She can make out a chanted mantra. The word slips from the depths in hopeless murmurs.

 _Convergence_.

Beneath her feet, the concrete grows warm and wet. A single wrong step almost has her slipping into a quaking section of the floor. She recoils in disgust when her hand makes contact with the wall, and it rumbles beneath her palm. Her repulsion increases exponentially when, under further scrutiny, she determines that the floor is composed of organic material.

It is rotten and sickly though it thrums with life.

She turns and motions to return to the direction she had come from, only to be met with a solid wall of the stretched organic tissue. On either side of her, the walls shrivel and pull inwards. Bit by bit, the room shrinks in on her. The floor beneath her seems to gradually pivot forward, and the muscle-like substance, lined with sinews, creeps in a single direction, forcing her to progress onwards.

She is unsteady on her own bare feet. Smaller, and on a much more personal level with the threat beneath her, the heavy drumming of her heart is felt in her throat and in her extremities.

The room turns into a corridor as the walls compress, and Peridot quickens her pace, trying hard to quell the trembling in her hands as she fights for enough purchase on the slick surface to make it out before she succumbs to the crushing darkness. She hopes there _is_ a way out.

The floor levels, and directly ahead, she can see an empty doorway. A breath of relief escapes her. The closer she gets to the empty doorway, the more noticeable the warm air becomes on her skin. She slows her pace in apprehension.

As she creeps closer, she notices that the air is not just warm, but humid. It paints her in a sheen of unpleasant sweat and smothers her.

There's a distinct groan beyond the doorway and her hope dies.

 _ **C**_ _lose the door._

The phrase is uttered with urgency. Peridot shoves past the restrictions of paralyzing apprehension and darts across the short expanse.

 _ **I**_ _t's going to get out._

She feels along the frame of the door and discovers that it is bare. No hinges, no door, no handle. Her tone spikes several octaves as she breathes out a desperate whine that does nothing to overshadow the gurgled wail from beyond the entrance. It sounds as if someone is drowning.

Dark, congealed liquid pools around her feet as it seeps from beyond the entranceway. A crunching, snapping sound and foul smell accompanies it, and Peridot fights with herself in order not to double over and empty the contents of her stomach. A dry gag is all she gets out and a rumble answers it.

Her hands tremble and the blood rushing through her ears almost makes it difficult to discern how close the thing on the other side may be.

 _ **I**_ _t's too late to close it. You have to finish what you started._

What did she start?

She doesn't want to finish it. She wants to go home. She wants the sterilized environment of her lab and a cold cup of coffee she had forgotten about amidst an ungodly accumulation of files and documents and she wants the sound-suppressed room waiting for her after a forty-eight hour shift with clean sheets and a ceiling above her that mimics the endless mass of the universe that she loves so much.

Something moves in the darkness. Her heart hits her throat.

It wheezes, chokes, and steps towards her.

Humanoid, just like the creature she had seen in the bathyscaphe. Two long tusk-like appendages stretch out over its head, joined at the shoulder gleaming in the low undistinguished light. Shreds of clothing cling to its corpse, and tufts of brown hair stick out of its skull in torn patches. The uniform appears to be from a security detail. It shuffles closer, and the Technician can make out two much smaller arm-like appendages protruding from its rotten intestines. Vacant, milky eyes loll about in the direction of the doorway without purpose until, all too suddenly, the thing goes rigid. As it inhales, the breath escapes from Peridot's lungs, and she finds herself gaping uselessly.

There has to be something she can do. She eyes the space between the creature's legs, and judges just how fast she would need to be in order to duck between them and escape into the encumbering darkness. She does not consider where she would hide or how long she could escape it. Fear stalls her thought process, and freezes her on step one. She replays her vision of escape over and over until she can think of nothing but the success of it. Drown the paralysis, take action.

Her right foot twitches as she readies herself to dart forward, her eyes locked on her destination beyond the raw irritation of the organic floor.

It has a disorienting amount of speed. The shock of it keeps her rooted. Before she could lift one foot off the ground, it lunges, and stops in front of her, strangling her with the rancid odor of its cavernous maw.

It takes her a few moments to notice.

The pain is deep. An insatiable sharp throbbing that only grows in intensity as her blurry, watery vision travels downwards. It collapses her form and shoots a white heat through all of her immediate thoughts. Plasma burns are an absolute relief compared to it.

The warmth leaves her. The tusk that is buried into her stomach is pulled upwards, and the ragged uneven bone structure pierces one of her lungs. She is thrown into a coughing fit that results in her drawn mouth being flooded with blood. Her hands fly to the tusk, uselessly pushing against it with strength that dwindles as soon as she bends her arms at the elbow. Her fingers slip against the blood flowing down the structure of the bone.

It is not how she wants to die.

She is unable to move as she is lifted off of the ground and swain to the side. The creature's misshapen mouth upturns into what Peridot can only interpret to be a cruel smile.

Her deathly visage is reflected in eyes of mindless hunger. She is powerless to do anything more than twitch and jerk as she is lowered back towards its gaping jaws, suffocating in the life that once ran through her veins. Long incisors sink into her dark hair and compress her mouth closed before she can taste the rank air. She snaps her eyes shut and desperately fights to produce an image that is anything but the back of the beast's throat.

 _Jasper_

-

She wakes up drenched, trembling, and sucking in desperate breaths. There is not enough oxygen in the pill-shaped container. She feels compressed and imprisoned.

The first thing she does is feel for her face. Intact, though strewn in horror. The exterior of her suit is cooled; an effort to regulate her internal risen body temperature. Coated in her own sweat, it seemed to be having little impact. She shifts herself up and sets her shaken metallic (metallic!) hands against the compression wheel, turning it and pushing outwards. The Technician pulls herself up through the entrance, and grapples for whatever considerate breath she can steal in the new open room, feeding her body the relieving oxygen it demanded.

Jasper is nowhere to be seen and a significant part of her is grateful for that. The precious moment of solitude in an open space does not go without being cherished. She staggers towards a crate and sits down, inspecting the metal tips of her fingers, running them over her fabric-restricted arms. Her heart is furiously punching her rib cage but she's _okay_. She has a moment to school herself into nonchalance and recover.

Outside the bathyscaphe, there are lights that turn the water green. The structure of the vehicle creaks beneath the pressure of the water as it sways against a tide and after a few moments of reflection, Peridot recognizes the lapping of surface waves against the top of the submersible. She wipes the back of her hand against her eyes, takes a steadying breath, and approaches the glass.

Small black spires sink into the top of the vehicle, holding it in place, and sections of wire are visible from where she stands, which connect into the back. The spires cause her to recollect her dream all too vividly, and she takes a step away from the glass, unconsciously hugging her arms. They are stationed at the port of the station, and Peridot does not doubt that Jasper had gone off to check the submersible in and relay their reports. Peridot still has her own to type up, but she has a max of four days to complete it, and feels little rush to hop right out of the vehicle and sprint her way to her room. There is little to say for what awaits her on the surface. Noise, construction, questions, security assessment, health monitoring (by Jasper's word) that involve neurological assessments on top of physical, and a number of other variables that she simple is not in a state of patience for.

She relishes the quiet.

Though it is not a distraction from the persistent mental images of her slumber that plague her, it is better than the nuisances of human contact. For the moment.

She stalks her way over to the pilot seat, slides down into it, and sighs heavily, as if doing so could possibly dispel the burden placed upon her shoulders. The entire seat smells of the Commander, and while it isn't entirely unpleasant, it consists of two days without a shower and excessive amounts of body spray. It's a _little_ unpleasant, but Peridot cannot claim innocence on going two days without a shower. The bathyscaphes simply do not have room for that kind of luxury. The Technician wallows in the thought a little longer, before leaning forward and activating the console. There is little harm in reviewing footage from her submersible as well as Jasper's. Call it prep work, if she is to be caught. There are standards she holds herself to, and she cannot allow the condition of the footage to be turned in as it is.

-

Jasper fitted the utility belt to herself, and rechecked her suit. The armour moves compatibly with her size, and it is a relief to have the familiar weight on her form. She flexes her arm, and tests her mobility. It would do her no good to have any part of her gear catch on another in a situation that demands her control and action.

She earns good pension with her rank, and her tasks are far more satisfying than that of a desk-ridden bureaucrat. It's something to be thankful for, even as she grumbles beneath her breath and stalks down the corridor, opening her navigation from the front of her suit. The bright holographic line leads her to her destination on the massive station in the most convenient route, and is only visible to herself. That in itself is convenient, so no one around her can see how blatantly lost she, a security detail, is on the water-stranded station. She's used to commandeering exo-atmospheric vehicles, not planet-driven research facilities.

Jasper can even manifest a three dimensional map in front of herself, select various floors, and get a bird's eye view of them from her own position, so long as she has the proper clearance to view them.

There are cafeterias, commons, communal habitats, oxygen maintenance with engines, lab decks, utilities, engineering, the communications hub. The list goes on, and it is little wonder how even those who have spent a couple of weeks in the facility can manage to lose themselves.

The Bay takes her half an hour to reach from utilities, and that is taking fast-paced no-nonsense steps.

Scientists and civilian personnel go out of their way to escape her path. There is formidable benefit to being a hulking figure clad in armor, even if it is in conformed attire.

Down a multitude of corridors and a couple flights of stairs, since elevators are reserved for executive associated staff, she arrives in the Bay area. There is a drastic change in temperature as Jasper approaches a doorway that automatically scans her person for her identification and access code before parting open.

She breathes rawly into the air and trudges her way across a console platform, down to where the submersible vehicles are stationed. She stalls for a moment, determinine which one she had surfaced in upon. She needs a solid night of rest and there is still much to be done.

A significant part of her wants to hold off on sleep as long as possible. But it can't be afforded in her line of work when a consistent amount of attention is always demanded. If she is lucky a new shipment of coffee has arrived in the lower level break room. That hope is enough to motivate her to cross the deck, board the top of her submersible, and unscrew the top latch.

The ladder is freezing to the touch. The water temperature of the planet around the facility is not regulated, simply because it is too resource costly for the length of time they'll be attentive to that particular oceanic zone.

It is just another motivation that urges her to get in, and out, and complete her given tasks.

She scales down the ladder, touches a boot to the floor, and pivots towards the narrow entrance that requires a duck of her head before she surfaces into the broad room of the bathyscaphe. Several feet ahead of her, the monitor flashes silent with images recovered from the abandoned submersible. With a burst of memory, Jasper touches her hand to an internal pocket of her suit at the front of her chest, running a thumb along the solid rectangle that takes up discreet space, before she squares her shoulders and marches up to the side of the seat.

Her brogue is dispassionate and guttural.

"It's protocol to surface upon docking when conscious."

Peridot ignores her. It causes a corner of Jasper's lip to curl, and she stops short, trying to neutralize her expression. The Technician has often remarked upon how _animalistic_ her mannerisms can seem. She will not give that satisfaction.

She sets a heavy hand on the back of the pilot seat, and swings it around hard enough to jostle the occupant.

"Get out," she commands, already reaching to unhook the ghostly-looking female.

Peridot swats at the invading hands with surprising vigor compared to Jasper's weary deflections of her effort. "Stop! I'm compressing the data I – we – Jasper _stop_."

"I already turned it in. When I caught the signal of the surface I told them when we were arriving and I was given a _specific_ time to turn it in to The Authority. Dragging you out of the chamber and taking you to the medical bay first would've jeopardized that time which is the _only_ reason you're still in here." Fed up, Jasper swats at the other's defensive hand hard, causing the Technician to recoil and shrink back into her seat with abject horror. When Jasper goes to justify her action, Peridot interrupts her.

"You _what_?" Her voice tears from her throat with a surprising pitch. Her hands fly to her hair, tugging at the strands in disbelief. It gives Jasper the opportunity to pry her out from the seat, and back away from it before the female can flail to grab hold of it again. "The files were completely disorganized. Some were cut off, some were hours of irrelevant watery darkness – I'm _responsible_ for making it visually appealing and in convenient compliance with the standards The Authority –."

"It's her fault it isn't up to par if she wanted it in such a damn hurry."

"That isn't how it works." Easily exhausted by the struggle, with no help from the number of hours she had been out of commission in the horrific realm of sleep, Peridot thumps the Commander's breastplate with a curled fist, and pushes the frames of her interface further up onto her nose, meeting with bitter eye contact.

"I turned it in, personally. It's fine."

"It _isn't_ ," Peridot insists with finality, even as Jasper hefts her better into her arms, and carts her back towards the ladder. "I don't want to go to the medical bay. I want to go to my room."

"You sound like you're five."

"I have every reason to be against the idea of being admitted."

As if the Commander could possibly understand what it meant to be admitted under such conditions. When Jasper's hand reaches the ladder with purpose, Peridot's heart sinks.


End file.
